Hong Kong mahjong, start to finish
Everything you need to sit down at a Mahjong Versus table: the goal, the tiles, how a turn works, what you can claim, and how hands are scored. Ten minutes of reading, a lifetime of grudges.
The Goal
目標Build a complete hand of four sets and one pair, fourteen tiles in all, then declare the win: 食糊 (sik wu, "going out"). A set is three tiles (or four, for a kong); the pair is two identical tiles, sometimes called the eyes.
A legal shape isn't enough. Your hand must also be worth the table's minimum faan (3 faan by default in Mahjong Versus). Scoring is chapter seven.
The Tiles
牌The set has 144 tiles: three suits of nine (four copies of each), seven kinds of honours, and eight bonus tiles.
Suit tiles form runs and triplets. Honours (winds and dragons) only form triplets and pairs, never runs. Bonus tiles never sit in your hand: draw one, set it aside face-up, draw a replacement. Each is worth extra faan if it matches your seat.
Setup
開局Four players sit at the four winds: East 東, South 南, West 西, North 北. East is the dealer 莊家 (jong ga) and plays first.
The tiles are shuffled into a wall and each player draws a hand of 13 tiles (the dealer briefly holds 14). Play moves counter-clockwise: East, then South, then West, then North.
A Mahjong Versus table plays one hand: seats are drawn, the hand runs to a win or a washout, and the table settles. In the app, shuffling, dealing, and seating are all automatic; you just play.
A Turn
出牌Every turn is the same two beats: draw one tile, discard one tile. Your hand always returns to 13. The game is deciding which tile you can live without, and reading what everyone else can't.
Discards are public and permanent. Every tile you throw tells the table what you're building, and feeds anyone waiting to claim it.
Sets & Claims
牌組Three kinds of set complete a hand. You can build them quietly from the wall, or claim another player's discard to finish one openly.
Pung碰
Three identical tiles. Claimable from any player's discard.
Chow上
A run of three in one suit. Claimable only from the player on your left.
Kong槓
Four identical tiles. Declare it and draw a replacement from the wall.
Winning
食糊When you're one tile away, you're calling 聽牌 (ting pai, "listening"). The winning tile arrives one of two ways, and how it arrives changes the score.
Self-draw自摸
You draw the winning tile from the wall yourself. Worth +1 faan, and all three opponents pay you.
Off a discard食出
Someone discards your winning tile and you claim it. The discarder pays your full score.
Declare, lay your hand face-up, and the app verifies the shape, checks the minimum, counts the faan, and settles all four seats instantly. No arguments, no arithmetic.
Scoring
番數Winning hands are valued in faan 番 (scoring points). Patterns stack: each one your hand contains adds its faan, and more faan means a steeper payout. The ones you'll see every session:
Stacking: a hand scores every pattern it contains, added together, so 對對糊 plus 混一色 is six faan. The two gold rows are limit hands: they pay the table's ceiling on their own and don't stack with anything else.
Who pays: on a self-draw, all three opponents pay. Off a discard, the discarder pays alone. The app banks every settlement automatically.
Glossary
術語That's the whole game. The app enforces every rule and counts every faan, so the fastest way to learn the rest is a seat at the table.
Coming soon to the App Store